This activity is a field investigation where students gather data, draw detailed diagrams, and write descriptions about living organisms and non-living things seen in a small school ground area.

The students will participate in listening and discussing the story, Under One Rock: Bugs, Slugs, and Other Ughs, by Anthony D. Fredericks and illustrated by Jennifer DiRubbio. On the following day, we will explore our nearby forest searching for some of the animals mentioned in the story. For the third day of this lesson, the students will share what they have written and drawn in their nature journals from the previous day's walk.

This student activity engages the students' thinking by listening to a story, brainstorming ideas in small groups about how human activity or natural disasters could possibly impact an animal's environment, and then reinforcing that thinking using a board game called Save an Animal.

This lesson is a classroom and field-based activity where students learn about the parts of a flower through observation, journaling, and Observation.

This activity is a lab investigation where students gather data on a seed or seeds that have been planted per their own design.

This is an activity in which students use their senses to describe their garden. This is a guided inquiry lesson.

Echolocation is the ability to orient by transmitting sound and receiving echoes from objects in the environment. As a result of a Marco-Polo type activity and subsequent lesson, students learn basic concepts of echolocation. They use these concepts to understand how dolphins use echolocation to locate prey, escape predators, navigate their environment, such as avoiding gillnets set by commercial fishing vessels. Students will also learn that dolphin sounds are vibrations created by vocal organs, and that sound is a type of wave or signal that carries energy and information especially in the dolphin's case. Students will learn that a dolphin's sense of hearing is highly enhanced and better than that of human hearing. Students will also be introduced to the concept of by-catch Students will learn what happens to animals caught through by-catch and why.

This activity will expose students to the local fish in their lakes. The students will be asked to identify, sort, and classify local fish.

Students learn about providing healthcare in a global setting and the importance of wearing protective equipment when treating patients with infectious diseases like Ebola. They learn about biohazard suits, heat transfer through conduction and convection and the engineering design cycle. Student teams design, create and test (and improve) their own Ebola biohazard suit prototypes that cover one arm and hand, including a ventilation system to cool the inside of the suit.

This investigation is a year round study of the phenology of a schoolyard.

This is a two part journaling activity prior to an existing week long biology field lab. The journaling activities described here have been added to the beginning of the Pond Study Lab to enhance student learning of observation and quality journaling skills.

This activity is a teacher-guided inquiry activity of the sorting or grouping of Minnesota critters according to student driven criteria or purpose of their groupings. Teacher/student questions and discussion should be encouraged after this activity to emphasize that awareness of the criteria or purpose of certain groupings may be important before beginning an investigation.

This activity provides students with a first look at water tension and its role in the life of a water strider.

This activity provides students with a first look at water tension and its role in the life of a water strider.

This lesson helps grade 3 students understand the difference between Vertebrates and Invertebrates.

Students will listen to the book, Under One Rock Bugs, Slugs, and Other Ughs, written by Anthony D. Frederick and illustrated by Jennifer DiRubbio and then make a mini-book observation journal, Under One Rock to record what they see when they go outdoors to investigate what lives under a rock.

This activity is a field/classroom activity where students collect soil samples, form inquiry questions, devise a sorting method, make observations of the contents, record information, share information, and draw conclusions about their findings. Students will generate other inquiry questions related to soil for future learning opportunities.

This activity is an inquiry based lesson focused on students making observations of birds in order to problem solve how to attract more birds to a schoolyard.

This activity is a field investigation where students investigate the water quality of a local stream or pond.